Freebody, John of Newport (deceased father of John, Thomas, and Samuel Freebody)

Freebody, Samuel (executor and son of John Freebody)

Freebody, Thomas (executor and son of John Freebody)

Gardiner, George (executor of Joseph Whipple)

Whipple, Joseph, deceased

Wickham, Benjamin (executor of Joseph Whipple)

Description

Dispute about the date from which interest is to be calculated and the manner in which depreciated currency will be computed in the controversy set out in Freebody v Brenton (11_1758_00, APC, v.4 [366] p.395)

Disposition

Order to Judges of Superior Court to comply with Orders in Council which, according to Bilder, Transatlantic Constitution, p.182, gave the Freebodys their interest with depreciation taken into account.

The only record in the APC in Brenton v Sylvester notes an appearance of counsel for Sylvester, respondent in an appeal brought by Brenton, Wickham, and Gardiner. Brenton, Wickham, and Gardiner, as we learn in Freebody v Brenton, were commissioners for the distribution of the estate of the insolvent Joseph Whipple. The two Freebody v Brenton cases are closely related. They involve mortgages, in which the elder Freebody seems to have been the mortgagee, and a dispute about whether the conditions of the mortgages had been fulfilled. The first of the two cases is an appeal by the elder Freebody. The second of the two cases is a revival of the first appeal brought by the elder Freebody’s sons as executors of his estate. The relationship of these cases to Brenton v Sylvester may simply be that the commissioners for the distribution of the estate of the insolvent Joseph Whipple were involved in both, or it may be closer. The records that we have examined do not allow us to tell which it is.

A note at the end of the respondent’s printed case states: “There is another appeal and cross appeal depending between the same parties, upon another mortgage . . . and as the proceedings . . . and the questions the same . . . it was thought unnecessary to repeat the same matter in two different printed cases, as the determination of one cause will of course decide the other.”

References in Smith, Appeals to the Privy Council from the American Plantations

Table of Cases (Freebody v Brenton) (extensive discussion)

DOCUMENTATION

Printed Cases

Appellant’s case

Case of the appellant in two appeals and as respondent in two cross-appeals (Freebody)

Rhode Island: committee report on petition of John, Thomas and Samuel Freebody for enforcing the Orders in Council of 14 Apr 1769 made on their appeals from Rhode Island; 6 July read and approved and peremptory Order in Council issued. Date: 1774 June 20

Instructions to the Committee of the Privy Council to hear the appeals of Freebody and Brenton can be found at the British Library in Additional Manuscripts 15489 f.33 (March 13, 1766). Orders in Council regarding the appeals follow at f.34–43 (April and July 1769).